Some hotels collect stars. Others collect corpses. The hospitality industry doesn’t advertise this for obvious reasons, but certain hotels attract death the way other properties attract five-star reviews. These aren’t ghost stories. They’re documented histories that the hotels either revel in, or try to keep quiet…
The Chelsea Hotel: New York
On 12 October 1978, Nancy Spungen was found dead on the bathroom floor of Room 100 at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. She’d bled to death from a single stab wound to the abdomen.
Bizarre But True! Her boyfriend, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, was the only other person in the room…
Vicious woke up on the floor that morning with no clear memory of what had happened. At 10 a.m, he called the front desk asking for help. Police found him wandering the hallways in an agitated state. The knife belonged to him, a Jaguar Wilderness K-11 with a five-inch blade.
He was charged with second-degree murder. He initially confessed, then retracted it, claiming he’d been unconscious from barbiturates. Witnesses said he’d taken at least 30 Tuinal tablets the night before, enough to put most people into a coma for hours.
The case never went to trial. Four months later, Vicious died of a heroin overdose whilst out on bail. He was 21 years old. Nobody knows what actually happened that night…
Some believe Vicious killed her during a drug-fuelled argument. Others point to the substantial amount of cash stolen from the room whilst he was unconscious, suggesting a robbery gone wrong. Drug dealer Rockets Redglare, who’d visited the room earlier that night, was repeatedly named as a suspect but never charged.
A third theory suggests a botched suicide pact. Vicious’s mother claimed her son left a note saying he was fulfilling his side of the bargain by dying and should be buried next to Nancy in his leather jacket and motorcycle boots.
The Chelsea Hotel—which had housed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Andy Warhol, became infamous for this one death. Room 100 remains one of the most notorious hotel rooms in music history. You can still book to stay there today…
Hotel Del Coronado: Coronado, California
On 24 November 1892, a woman calling herself Lottie A. Bernard checked into the Hotel del Coronado in California.
Five days later, she was found dead on the beach steps with a ragged wound in her right temple. A revolver lay two inches from her outstretched hand. Rain had washed away the blood. Her body was soaking wet, stiff, and cold.
But everything about her was false…
She’d told different people she had stomach cancer, heart disease, or neuralgia. She claimed her brother was coming to treat her. But she had no brother.
The name in the register was fake. It took weeks to establish her real identity: Kate Farmer Morgan. Even then, her story didn’t make sense. She’d travelled alone, told contradictory lies about her health and died under circumstances that could have been suicide or murder.
Her grave remained unmarked for 98 years.
Then attorney Alan May, who claimed to have seen her ghost, donated a headstone. He visited her grave regularly until his death in 1991. Before he died, May declared Kate Morgan was his great-great-grandmother.
The hotel still operates. Room 3327, where Kate stayed, is the most requested room in the building.
The Stanley Hotel: Colorado
Stephen King checked into the Stanley Hotel in Colorado in 1974 as the only guest on the final day of the season…
That night, he reportedly had a nightmare about a fire hose coming to life and chasing his son down the hotel corridors. He woke up and wrote the outline for The Shining before breakfast.
Room 217, where King stayed, has its own history.
In 1911, housekeeper Elizabeth Wilson entered the room and lit a match beneath a lamp during a gas leak. The explosion destroyed the room, the hallway and the floor beneath, dropping her into the dining room below. Amazingly, she survived with two broken ankles. Despite years of employment and hospital records documenting the explosion, not one photograph of Elizabeth Wilson exists.
The Stanley opened in 1909 as the first hotel west of the Mississippi with full electricity, running water and telephones. It had no heating – the building was designed as a summer resort. Guests who stayed through autumn froze.
The hotel now runs ghost tours. Room 217 is booked months in advance!
Grand Union Hotel: The Building With Bullet Holes in the Walls
The Grand Union Hotel in Fort Benton, Montana, recorded 26 confirmed deaths. Most were shootings. The actual number is most likely even higher with many deaths in the Wild West going unreported.
You can still see the bullet holes in the walls…!
A drunk cowboy was shot dead whilst trying to ride his horse up the staircase. Guests today report hearing hooves stomping on the stairs at night.
Thomas J. Wright won the hotel in a poker game in 1881, but someone shot him in the back. His ghost supposedly haunts Room 18, which the hotel keeps unbooked to avoid disturbing him.
The building operated during Fort Benton’s peak as a trading post, when the town was one of the wildest in Montana Territory. Violence wasn’t an anomaly, it was standard operating procedure.
You can still book a room there even today…
The Barclay Hotel: Downtown LA’s Forgotten Murder Palace
The Barclay Hotel opened in 1897 as the Van Nuys Hotel, the first in Los Angeles to offer electricity and a telephone in every room. It was the finest hotel in the city.
Then it became a murder scene so frequently that locals stopped being surprised.
At least 16 deaths occurred within its walls. Two serial killers chose it as their hunting ground.
In November 1944, ex-Navy corpsman Otto Stephen Wilson checked in under a false name. He met Virgie Lee Griffin at a bar, brought her back to the hotel and murdered her with a butcher knife he’d purchased earlier that day. Her mutilated body was found stuffed in a wardrobe.
He killed another woman at a different LA hotel the next day. Police caught him in a bar three doors down from his second victim, still carrying matches from the Barclay. He was executed in California’s gas chamber in 1946.
In 1975, serial killer Vaughn Greenwood – known as the Skid Row Slasher, murdered Samuel Suarez in Room 528. Greenwood targeted transient men across downtown Los Angeles and was later convicted of nine murders.
In 1972, a suspicious fire broke out on the sixth floor whilst 132 guests were staying at the hotel. Three people died. Seven more were injured and the circumstances were never fully explained.
The Barclay is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Los Angeles. In 2021, it was converted into low-income housing. The building stands at the corner of Fourth and Main, where some of downtown’s highest-profile restaurants now operate. Nobody mentions the bodies…
